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Roots rock
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Roots rock is a term recently used to describe "a style of rock music that draws material from various American musical traditions including country, blues, and folk." The term is sometimes used in a broader sense to encompass other Americana, including early rock and roll, country rock, and other genres of rock with traditional roots. Decades prior to its current popular use the term has had an association with reggae music popularized by Bob Marley's song "Roots Rock Reggae" in 1976.
With the term's new use "roots rock" refers to "a return to rock 'n' roll's roots: the merging of blues and country, a revival of folk, an adaptation and celebration of American rock local traditions, from swamp-rock to rockabilly to Southern rock to other heartland styles."
Music critics have recently referred to rock bands from late 1960s such as Creedence Clearwater Revival through the mid-1990s-era such as the band Wilco as "roots rock".
Madani claims that that roots rock was popularized in the late 1960s, when "[r]ock music took a step back from its drug-fueled experiments ...
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Encyclopedia
Roots rock is a term recently used to describe "a style of rock music that draws material from various American musical traditions including country, blues, and folk." The term is sometimes used in a broader sense to encompass other Americana, including early rock and roll, country rock, and other genres of rock with traditional roots. Decades prior to its current popular use the term has had an association with reggae music popularized by Bob Marley's song "Roots Rock Reggae" in 1976.
With the term's new use "roots rock" refers to "a return to rock 'n' roll's roots: the merging of blues and country, a revival of folk, an adaptation and celebration of American rock local traditions, from swamp-rock to rockabilly to Southern rock to other heartland styles."
Music critics have recently referred to rock bands from late 1960s such as Creedence Clearwater Revival through the mid-1990s-era such as the band Wilco as "roots rock".
History
Jack Madani claims that that roots rock was popularized in the late 1960s, when "[r]ock music took a step back from its drug-fueled experiments ... and turned to less-experimental sounds, while the topics became angrier." He argues that "Creedence Clearwater Revival was the most successful of the roots rock groups, with hits ranging from Green River and Proud Mary to the ferocious anti-Viet Nam [war] song Fortunate Son. By the late 1970s, there were a flood of genre fusions and new styles in rock, including "punk, new wave, power pop, ska, and the other rock revolutions." However, by the early 1980s, these "rock revolutions" had "passed their peak and were in decline." The rise of the music video station MTV helped to promote commercial genres such as pop and dance music, and there was little traditional rock music available on the airwaves.
In the early 1980s, as a "reaction against the aggressive and nihilistic tendencies of punk, the bombast of metal and prog, and the synthetic nature of new wave", some listeners began seeking out rock bands that played "no-frills" "music with straight-ahead lyrics." These "rustic"-sounding" bands, whose music was filled with "echoes of folk, blues, Rockabilly, or country were called 'Roots Rock'" groups; though in Los Angeles they were associated with the loosely termed cowpunk music. Amidst the proliferation of pop and dance music in the early 1980s, though, one writer notes that emergence of singer "[Bruce] Springsteen represents the ultimate standard bearer for the post-60's mainstream "Roots Rock" hero." The writer argues that Springsteen's music is "a working-class mix of 1950's rock 'n' roll,... 60's folk sensibility, and 70's rock ... garagey sounding guitars, good-time raucousness, and homey vocals is as American as a Chevy pickup."
Many roots rock bands did get some "limited MTV exposure", but they were never given the "heavy rotation" that pop bands received. Roots rock was a "fragmented and localized" trend that was nurtured on the college radio airwaves, not a mass movement which was supported by the mainstream radio stations. It encompassed the "country-rock stylings of Lone Justice, the garage rock of the Long Ryders, the 50's flavored rock 'n' roll of the Blasters, or the cowpunk of the Beat Farmers. What it all had in common was a simplicity of approach; guitars, bass, drums, singer" which made the core sound of bands or artists such as the Gun Club, Chris Isaak, Steve Earle, John Mellencamp, and Los Lobos.
Bands with a strong "roots rock" orientation included the Bottle Rockets, the BoDeans and Jason & the Scorchers, and roots rock influences can be found in bands such as the "Counting Crows, Cracker, The Nob Hill Billys, and Wilco"; indeed, the "entire Alt-Country movement" can be considered to be a roots rock offshoot. Roots rock bands from the 1990s, the decade of roots rock's decline, included Wilco, whose "roots-rock...[sound] reached back to proven materials: the twang of country, the steady chug of 1960's rock, the undulating sheen of the Beach Boys, the Honky-tonk hymns of The Band and the melodic symmetries of pop."
Media coverage
Roots rock reviews are available in No Depression, and Uncut, a British magazine. PBS's Austin City Limits series often feature alternative country, Americana, or roots rock acts, and the city of Austin, Texas, hosts an annual Austin City Limits music festival.
See also
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